JJ Nitro

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My blog
Sometimes I feel like a wasp...

2007-06-11, 09:03:41 

Have you heard of those experiments, where biologists mess with a wasp by removing an insect it has caught from its nest? These wasps, called tarantula hawks , catch and kill a tarantula, drag it back to her nest so she can lay an egg in the spider's abdomen. When the larvaw hatches, it's got a ready-made meal to scarf down.

But these wasps operate on very simple rules. They drag their prey up to the entry of their hole, then they enter their hole alone, to make sure there's not another predator in there or something. Then go back outside and grab their prey and drag it back inside.

To see how much of this is learned, thinking behavior, and how much is ingrained, programmed behavior, researchers tried messing with these wasps. When the wasp went inside its hole to check things out, the researchers would move the dead tarantula a little farther from where the wasp left it, near the entrance to the hole.

When the wasp comes out to get the tarantula, the spider isn't right where they left it. It's a bit farther away, and this resets the wasp's whole program from bringing the spider into the nest. So then the wasp drags the spider back up to closer to the hole again, then goes into the hole again to check it out—even though the wasp just did this seconds before.

Each time the wasp enters the hole, the researchers dragged the spider a little ways away, and the wasp would start its process over again each time. They could do this over and over, and the wasp never got it, and never got the spider into its nest.

Sometimes I feel like that wasp: automatic and dumb.

About a month ago, my bike got stolen. I think the reason was that I just forgot to lock it up. I had that bike for 10 years, and it was my main mode of transportation, and I don't think I ever that before. I don't remember ever coming back to my bike and realizing, "Oh shit, I forgot to lock it up. But I'm lucky, because no one ripped it off!"

I think I forgot to lock my bike that day because when I got off my bike, I got distracted and was looking at the new bike seat I'd just bought on my way home. I think I have an automatic kind of program in my mind for locking my bike, and if I get distracted, I skip the whole thing and don't even notice.

So now I've got a replacement bike, and the first time I locked up, on the way to the coffee shop, I got distracted looking at the bike lock mounter I put on the bike. Then I started to walk away, with my bike lock in hand and my bike unlocked. I would be incredibly pissed if I forgot to lock my replacement bike and it got stolen—especially on the first day I had it.

All this makes me wonder how much of what we do is automatic and unthinking. It makes me realize how much of the time I'm sort of drifting through life without being aware of what's happening around me.

It reminds me, too, of one of these kind-of-hackneyed "Zen master" stories:

After ten years of apprenticeship, Tenno achieved the rank of Zen teacher. One rainy day, he went to visit the famous master Nan-in.
When he walked in, the master greeted him with a question, "Did you leave your wooden clogs and umbrella on the porch?"
"Yes," Tenno replied.
"Tell me," the master continued, "did you place your umbrella to the left of your shoes, or to the right?"
Tenno did not know the answer, and realized that he had not yet attained full awareness. So he became Nan-in's apprentice and studied under him for ten more years.
 
Severed finger makes paramedic faint

2007-06-05, 07:57:24 

When I was at the post office today, a clerk was telling her co-worker about how her brother was working on his riding lawn mower and got his hand caught in some part of the mechanism.

The brother was home alone, and so he had to back the machine off, get his hand out. One of his fingers had been torn completely off. Then he called 911.

When the paramedic arrived, he saw the brother's hand—and passed out. So then the brother had to call 911 again, to get another ambulance to come out, both to help him and help the downed paramedic.

The story seems a bit unlikely—aren't there at least two people in an ambulance, like a driver and another person? Anyway, I would be pissed if my paramedic passed out at the sight of carnage. 
 
Phew! Publisher stops organizing arms exhibitions

2007-06-04, 16:50:52

One of the outlets I write for, New Scientist magazine, is owned by the huge conglomerate Reed Elsevier. Reed has been under attack for years, but especially lately, for running arms exhibitions where people go to check out the latest weapon systems and figure out what they want to buy to kill people more efficiently and creatively.

Since much of the company's business is publishing science and medical journals—like the Lancet, the Cell journals, and literally thousands of others—it's not surprising they'd come under fire.

I was trying to decide whether I should think twice about writing for New Scientist. How deep does the responsibility go for these kinds of things?

But now, it seems, I don't have to worry about it. Reed said they'll stop organizing these shows, according to an article in The Scientist.

 
Eradicating polio is cheaper than coping with it

2007-04-17, 10:24:46 

This is kind of a no-brainer: eradicating polio is cheaper than controlling it over the long-term, shows a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health that appeared in the journal Lancet.

Everything I've read indicates that preventative medicine and investment in health generally reaps huge rewards. And when you consider that polio is almost eradicated, with just a few spots (Northern India and Pakistan, and Nigeria) that still suffer outbreas of the disease, it seems obvious that making the final push with vaccinations and getting rid of this disease—as happened with smallpox—is going to be better than managing it over the long-term.

Anyway, at least people are debating what's the best course to take. 
 
Selfish genes drive out malaria

2007-04-07, 14:21:21 

Most genes in a body, like your own, work together to help you survive, make babies, and generally get on with life. But some genes are called "selfish" because they can work to reproduce themselves, even at the expense of the body that they're in.

Now researchers have put this selfishness to good use, showing that selfish genes could be harnessed to drive malaria parasites from mosquitoes that carry the disease.

This is pretty surprising to me because I would have thought a selfish gene would have hurt the mosquitoes carrying it, so that they wouldn't reproduce the others that lack the gene. In that case, the mosquitoes lacking the selfish gene would always win out, and they'd continue to carry malaria.

But the new study suggests the resistant mosquitoes could win the struggle for existence, driving out the disease-carrying mosquitoes. The new research was actually in fruit flies, but the selfish gene they looked at could be transferred to mosquitoes.

I'm sure in the long run, mosquitoes might mutate in a way that would get around this trick. But if the trick worked long enough, it could save a lot of lives.

Also, it could conceivably work long enough to drive the malaria parasite to extinction. It's a long shot, but smallpox has been eliminated from the world (except for a couple stockpiles in labs), and polio has almost been eradicated. Those are both caused by viruses and are passed person-to-person, whereas malaria is caused by a bacteria carried by mosquitoes. But it still seems like eliminating malaria could still be possible.

Read more about the recent experiment on SciDevNet.

 
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